To mark Qods (Jerusalem) Day, which in 2018 fell on June 8, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) deputy commander Hossein Salami participated in a Qods Day march in the city of Mashhad, and gave a speech as part of the Friday sermon in which he explained the rationale for destroying the State of Israel in Islamic revolutionary thought and in the vision of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Revolution, and his successor Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
In his speech, he underlined Iran’s problem with Israel’s existence, and how it should be resolved—primarily by military means, using Hezbollah, the Iranian regime’s creation, which he called “a mighty power” with an arsenal of more than 100,000 missiles aimed at Israel. Salami also named “the Islamic army in Syria” aimed at operating from the Golan Heights against Israel and awaiting orders “to eradicate the evil regime.”
Using threatening language against the West, Salami noted that Iran controlled the shipping lanes for bringing energy to it, and the sources of that energy, and added that economic prosperity is enjoyed by the West by virtue of the security for commercial shipping that Iran permits. Thus, he said, the European countries must not pressure Iran to enter into negotiations with them to limit its missile might and its expansion in the Middle East, which Iran absolutely opposes.
The full report can be read at MEMRI here.